Primrose arc is the best one yet, because it has gravity to it, which most JRPG plotlines lack. She is a disgraced daughter of an assasinated noble that works in a brothel.
Her friend helps her escape only to be killed by their owner.
I had a lot of trouble with this boss fight, mainly because I didn’t care to level up my characters much, while the bosses scale with number of members in your party.
Macallan is a strange whisky. It’s considered to be good, but not good for its price, and it doesn’t have characteristics that are considered to be good, such as 46% ABV. By this point, there’s an entire category of YouTube reviews of “MacCallan alternatives”.
There is a catch, though, which is independent bottlers. I have a bottle from Berry&Rudd which I like, as well as more recent Olorosum and the Dark Fruit Feedback Loop 17 (Balmenach?) from Scotch Whisky Society.
It is rumoured that Signatory independent bottlers buy distillate from Macallan, but do not dilute it like Macallan does. And that’s what Speyside M is. With the emphasis on M: there are just two distilleries in Speyside that start with M, and experts say this ain’t Mortlach. I believe them, since Signatory actually have a bottling from Mortlach, and they say so on the bottle. So it’s either Macallan, or Signatory playing the entire whisky community really well.
I was delaying this bottle, until I discovered it almost entirety disappeared. There are plenty of 14 years around, but not 16. So I did get one of the last ones available.
On the nose, it’s Christmas pudding: molases, dates, figs, raisins, all the sweet and sticky and dark stuff. And tastes as you’d expect: sweet, a bit sour, and with a very long warm finish. The closest I have at the moment is probably the aforementioned Dark Fruit Feedback Loop 17, although Lochlea Cask Strength Batch 2 comes close too. Definitely intesnse at 57% ABV.
Considering that I paid 83GBP for that bottle, and Scotch Whisky Society at that age is around 100GBP, it’s a steal.
I decided to try NOD campaign after all, if only for the CGIs, but on Easy. The difficulty is as I remember it, but on the other hand, the difficulty also lowers the costs of units, so still not the original experience. You can’t step in the same river twice, I guess.
I remembered the iconic scene where Seth gets executed in the middle of the briefing, but didn’t remember what that was about. Turns out, he wanted us to attack the Pentagon.
Another interesting detail, not sure how canon it is, but on the other hand, the entire C&C universe went to shit, so canon doesn’t matter: Kane says he was the one who discovered tiberium and gave it its name.
I was always fascinated that if you capture GDI Construction Yard with NOD, you can build helicopters. It’s such a specific mechanic, as GDI doesn’t have its counterpart, and also there’s just the final mission that has two enemy bases, so by the time you capture a Construction Yard, it isn’t Mission Accomplished yet. Later, Starcraft will have that mechanic as well, but not any other Command&Conquer game, as far as I can remember.
NOD campaign is also weird, because it has 13 missions instead of 15 for GDI. And I’m not sure if it’s a bug, but Temple of Nod allowed me to build only a single nuclear missile, which I wasted, because I was used to firing Ion Cannon every few minutes.
The ending is weird as well. Suddenly, Kane talks about netrunners and cyberspace, and there are three hackers trying to pass GDI cybersecurity defences and getting fried. How did it turn into cyberpunk, suddenly?
Also, for some reason Kane captures the Ion Cannon to frame GDI. Dude, you have built a nuke already.
This is the only model I wanted to paint when I started painting Warhammer a year and a half ago. And finally I got to it.
I must apologise to Citadel Plastic Glue, it actually works well with Warhammer.
It is larger than I expected, 60mm base, and has around 50 parts.
The really nice bit is that the arms are on those ball bearings, which means you have a lot of flexibility for the pose.
The not so nice bit is that it’s very hard to drybrush. I wish I had drybrushed it separately and combined later, but here we are.
I might say it as well now, this is everything I wanted Diablo 4 to be. The linear progression means you don’t fight level 50 hedgehogs. And the fact that enemy bodies do not disappear until you leave the zone adds to the spectacle.
By level 15 I got my first unique item, and by “unique” I mean actually a unique: it’s a mercenary coat that emits smoke.
It is curious that they decided to add friction with identify scrolls and tiny inventory without autosorting, but you don’t have item durability.
The bosses are such a spectacle, even the side-quest ones, like the Candlemass, a gargoyle that comes to life. Or even the pack of dogs in the circle of grass.
The Mansion is very interesting, as it clearly mimics Diablo 3 Cathedral design where you descent down a hole, getting close and closer to the bottom.
And the Count boss is clearly swordwielsing man-horse from Bloodborne, only he’s swordweilding man-wolf (which also explains why we were fighting werewolves when we weren’t fighting vampires). Speaking of vampires, those are Darkest Dungeon version, insectlike with clear bellies full of blood. The game has many inspirations.
Anyway, beating the count brings us to Act II, which is of course set in… a desert.
I never managed to get into Path of Exile 1. Similarly to Titan Quest, the Greek/Roman aesthetics doesn’t appeal to me for some reason. Path of Exile 2 is another story: it’s gothic style is less of Diablo, and more of Warhammer.
I usually like to play as Paladin, but since there’s none available, I went with crossbow wielding mercenary, a bit like Demon Hunter from Diablo 3. WASD movement and roll almost turns the game into twin-stick shooter. And the fact that one of the skills turns the crossbow into a shotgun helps too.
The system where you need to pick a skill instead of getting one after a level up takes some adjusting to, but not too much. You can pick any skill, but the game does suggest you some that should be more useful to your class.
Such a surprise that you can put the game on a pause. I got use to ARPGs forcing you to be always-on.
The best part of the game so far are the bosses. They are amazingly designed, clearly telegraph their attacks, and as I’ve already learned, deadly.
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Completed GDI campaign. I think I’ll skip NOD campaign, as I’ve seen most if not all of the new NOD units already, and there wasn’t much new to begin with.
To the best of my understanding, both the GDI and NOD endings are somewhat canon, because when you start the expansion campaign for GDI, they say they lost contact with Philadelphia space station (because NOD shot it down), but they need to recover Cabal, NODs AI, from the ruins of the temple, which you destroyed at the end of GDI campaign. Cabal then quickly betrays you, and you have to put it down.
It seems that the pace of units getting experience has been increased, as in the Tiberian Sun, I rarely had a veteran unit,
The new GDI unit, Juggernaut, is awesome. It’s a better version of NOD artillery, firing three shells instead of one, albeit less accurately. There’s a mission where you need to pair it with GDI commando, Ghost Stalker. The only issue in that mission is the commando himself, as he’s unable to shoot up slopes 🤦♂️
Only the final GDI mission is really difficult, or unnecessarily evil, as you start extremely close to enemy artillery positions without many options to tackle them. Luckily there’s no time limit in this one.
One final surprise is that once you capture three key points, a huge robot appears, and you need to destroy Cabal before that robot reaches your base, as it destroys almost any unit in a single shot.
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